Ceejay74's Personal Finance Blog

A blog to help me document my journey out of debt.

I'm the CFO of a three-adult, two-child, two-cat household. There's me (CJ, age 44), my husband (NT, age 44), my wife (AS, age 39), and our kids AA (age 7) and SL (age 5). Oh, and the cats are named Whiskey and Clue.

Until July 2007 we hadn't been serious about financial stability, but then we started focusing on paying down our massive debt, building an emergency fund and saving for retirement. In October 2010, we finished paying off all of our credit card debt--over $70,000! Adding in student loans and mortgages, we've paid off more than $250,000 of debt so far. In June 2015, we used a windfall to pay off all our remaining non-home-related debt!

Pragmatic - emergency preparedness. Research on cdc.gov, ready.gov & dps.mn.gov. Make a kit, make a plan, get informed. First aid training, e.g. CPR.
Jan: researched kits, plans and classes; bought some preparedness supplies for kit; cleaned out basement to make room for eventual emergency kit.
Feb: no progress

Work/professional development: Look for class on Agile; see if work will pay for it.
Jan: No progress
Feb: No progress

Work/professional development: Start to limit social/personal internet at work.
Jan: No personal internet/phone at work one day per week. DONE!
Feb: 2 days per week--done

Home: Full kitchen renovation. See what other improvements we can save up for after that.
Jan: Savings at $21,075

Vacations: UK family trip after Xmas. Solo trips for adults. Weekend at lake. CJ family reunion in June/July Niece's wedding in Va. in August.
Jan: some planning, nothing booked
Feb: time off booked for June/July and August trips

Big picture goals:

$512,564 in retirement assets by March 2019
Balance as of 1/31/2018: $404,682
Ultimate goal: 8x annual income by retirement

Firmed up the house plan a bit

April 24th, 2014 at 03:29 pm

Wow. Work has just been insane lately. If this writing project goes well, it could mean big things for me. Right now, all it means is trying to cram another nearly full-time job into my already nearly full-time job. Needless to say, not much time for blogging! But I'm planning on working a bit some night or this weekend in return for taking this mental break, because my brain is overtired and not working at its peak capacity. Will be better if I take a break from work thinking.

We've barely had any concentrated grownup time in my house this week, at least when all of us were present, with no kids around, not doing other stuff. But we had about a 10-minute hurried discussion yesterday about the house-buying plan, and came to a fairly straightforward conclusion: If we don't get the land deal money, we'll probably start looking for a new house in about a year. Meanwhile, we'll work on renovating both the US condo and UK flat with the money we've got now. We just decided we can't put all our money into a down payment right now, because then we'd be carrying two mortgages, we'd have no cushion to speak of, and we wouldn't be able to complete the US reno anytime soon because much of our surplus budget would be just going to carry the two mortgages, and if we couldn't do the reno, odds are we wouldn't be able to sell (at least not at the price we need to break even on our mortgage).

If we do get that big windfall, should pretty much be able to start all three things simultaneously: flat reno, condo reno and house-hunting.

So that makes it pretty easy. I do need to look at the annual budget to see if we'll have to make any cuts to get to the savings we need within a year without the land deal, but other than that it's pretty cut-and-dried. We have a contractor coming tonight to check out our bathroom and we'll see if we can get any help within our tight budget ($5K for everything). Doesn't hurt to ask someone!

I still can't tell if the land deal will go through. My dad emailed us (first time he's weighed in, I think he's trying to stay out of it but some parts of it only he can handle since he owns the land) to say he'd sent back some notarized docs to the gas company and would mail each of us kids a copy. I couldn't resist and emailed back to see if he knew whether it was a done deal or just an option that the gas co. might or might not follow through on, but I haven't heard back from him.

Meanwhile, I've been chatting and texting and Facebooking with one of my two friends who would consider moving in with us if we got a multifamily. They're perfectly serious about it as long as the second space meets some basic needs and is in a neighborhood they like. He also said they're fine in their current rental and willing to wait a year to see if anything pans out. He's going to keep an eye on multifamilies for sale to see how quickly they go and what they actually sell for.

Meanwhile, I'm going to bone up on mortgage brokers, credit unions, real estate agents, online mortgage lenders, and all the other great ideas and tips you guys gave me on my last post. Thank you!!

I think it would be great, kind of like having extended family nearby. Also wouldn't hurt to have help with the mortgage! But I'll only do it if we can find a multifamily where our part of it satisfies our needs and makes us excited to move in.

Not too much other news. In the declutter arena, I've gotten the oldest kid to set aside a few more toys for donate/garage sale. I also cleared out a hundred or so emails from my work inbox but still don't have it down where I want it to be.

I was able to view the claims for SL's ER visit and talked to the insurance company for help interpreting it. I was excited to learn we'll owe less than $300 for the whole shebang! There have been 4 claims so I think that should be all.

NT's job is actually looking good right now! His co-worker leaving seems to have woken them up, and they hired not only someone to replace him, but also someone for a new position that's been needed for years. So it looks like NT might be happier there and be able to stay longer and look for other jobs at his leisure.

AS's job will be winding down over the next several months or so. We brainstormed possible new professions for her a bit this morning, but it's still really preliminary. Her job needs her really badly until they fill other positions and train people up.